"Never forget it is real people who live out such tales and bear the price of the telling, in grief and guilt and sorrow". -Jacqueline Carey

Song Lyric Sunday – Waiting On The World To Change by John Mayer

So, this turned out to be much harder than I, at first, thought it would be. I had a whole post written but then I realized I had already posted that particular song, so I had to go back to the drawing board.

I literally started going down my list of songs and two hours later, I finally found this one – how could I not have thought of this one from the beginning?!?

I love John Mayer for his brilliant lyrics, his amazing guitar playing and his beautiful voice. Waiting is a strong tool in many fights… sometimes it provides perspective and allows you to keep your power. But eventually, I believe the waiting needs to turn into doing something. We have the power to make changes, but sometimes the fight isn’t fair. Let’s not give up hope.

My favorite line in this one is “when you trust your television, what you get is what you got. Cause when they own the information, they can bend it all they want.”

Me and all my friends
We’re all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There’s no way we ever could

Now we see everything that’s going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It’s hard to beat the system
When we’re standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would have never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

That’s why we’re waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It’s not that we don’t care,
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

And we’re still waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Song Lyric Sunday is open to anyone who wants to share music. Please feel free to click the link, read the rules and post one of your own.

Excellent choice, my favourite line is Now we see everything that’s going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it.. it really resonates with the world todayl!

I love this song. So glad when it showed up in 2006 because I had been thinking there were whole generations passing by without MUSIC to inspire and fire up people!
Found this quote about Mayer and the song on Wikipedia. Matt Collar with AMG wrote that “Nobody — not a single one of Mayer’s contemporaries — has come up with anything resembling a worthwhile anti-war anthem that is as good and speaks for their generation as much as his ‘Waiting on the World to Change'”.
I do think more music that inspires has been introduced since 2006.
Thanks again Helen!

When Nixon ended the draft in early 1973, he essentially eliminated the main reason there were anti-war songs in the ’60s and ’70s. People weren’t as outraged by the idea that there was a war in a jungle far, far away as that America’s young men were being forced to fight and die in it. We didn’t really care that North Vietnam was trying to reunite its two halves divided by French colonialism, and the French, funded largely by the US, were desperately trying to maintain a foothold in SE Asia. But when the French gave up a war they didn’t know how to fight or win, the US stepped in, played the home version of the Domino Theory of Communism game to frighten the populace, and started snatching boys out of their homes to teach them to kill so they could drop them in a booby-trapped jungle to kill Charlie or burn the place down.

By the time John Mayer was born 4-1/2 years after the draft ended, the only people who would fight America’s wars volunteered to do it. How can you motivate a nation to protest that? Why would you want to? There was no need. We honored those volunteers. We reviled those sent against their will as if the whole thing had been their fault.

The information is still bent, but thanks to world wide personal internet connections that didn’t exist during the Vietnam Era, we’re learning to straighten it out for ourselves. The picture is pretty grim, but knowing we’re not alone in our disgust and fear, we have a better chance of rising up together all over the troubled world to end the reckless hate.

I completely agree with you on that, Helen, but I can’t imagine the entire world population being so enlightened that it will end anytime before our near extinction by weapons of mass destruction of such magnitude that very few of us are left. There has always been warfare, from clan and tribal disputes to citystate feuds to religious crusades to modern world wars. At least the soldiers going to fight and die are not being sent against their will. They make sacrifices I think we all feel shouldn’t have to be made, but it’s a freely made personal choice that kind of dulls the majority’s urge to protest. I suspect that urge will grow as we begin to feel more personally threatened than we already do. When the fighting comes here and is not so easily quelled.

I used to think there were only two types of optimists: hopeless and cockeyed. lol. I recently had an interesting and worthwhile conversation with someone who uses the term “pessimistic optimist” and describes it this way: “A pessimistic optimist holds their arm out to have the bandaid ripped off but cries the whole time that it’s gonna hurt !” I think a realistic optimist looks a little further into the future and says, “Yeah, it’s gonna hurt, but not for long!”

This song will always take me back to that time when it was written, for that time it was written, which was the Iraq war.
Those lyrics you highlight are enough to always get my heart beating a little faster when I hear them. It feels so true, now especially, with social media that didn’t even exist when this song came out originally. Wow. Crazy.

Well, I'm dyslexic so writing about something I love: Music, might help but it's most likely just full of mistakes. That title is also lyrics from The Drones song called I Don't Want To Change. Oh, my name is William and thanks for having a look.